MADISONVILLE, Ky. (9/25/13) – Are you currently in the health care field and looking for new career options? Does your schedule prevent you from taking traditional in-person classes? If so, check out the five new online courses that Madisonville Community College will be offering in the upcoming spring semester. Chief Academic Affairs Officer Dr. Deborah Cox shared, “MCC is proud of the quality and variety of online experiences it has to offer students in this region. Our college is recognized for its exceptional variety of career programs leading to well-paying employment, and the online programs and courses make these more accessible to the students in our area.”

Two of the new online courses, GLY 130 – Dinosaurs and Disasters: A Brief History of the Vertebrates and the accompanying lab GLY 131 – Dinosaur Laboratory, will satisfy the Natural Sciences general education requirement for degree and diploma options. The lecture course examines dinosaurs’ interactions with their environment, their indirect influence on mammals, and implications for humankind. The history of dinosaurs from early vertebrate ancestors to their final extinction will be traced and the course surveys the evolutionary, paleogeographic, environmental, and possible extraterrestrial causes for their rise to dominance and sudden fall. The laboratory course will involve analysis and interpretation of fossils, scale models, and sedimentary rocks to interpret ancient environments, dinosaur anatomy and geologic history.

In addition, MCC’s new Health Care Informatics (HCI) program will be implemented in January 2014. Offered online, HCI is a discipline that integrates information science and computer science into the health care professions, gaining the ability to combine resources, devices and methods required for the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of collected information and data in health sciences and biomedicine. HCI provides a tremendous advantage to health care practitioners through the combination of health care concepts and information technology management that is an integral part of the health care industry. Obtaining HCI certificates increases practitioner knowledge and skills that are required to aid in the reduction of health care costs, expanding access to quality care and improving the quality of services. Health Care Informatics is an expanding field that is rapidly becoming an excellent career option for many health care professionals. Health Care Informaticists work in a variety of environments including hospitals, clinics, physician offices, public health agencies, technological firms/vendors, research facilities and insurance. The typical salary in the health care informatics field ranges from $35,000 to $50,000.

Health Care Informatics is a selective admission program and enrollment requires a minimum of an associate degree in health care or a related field, or consent of the program coordinator/instructor. Two credential options are available – Health Care Informatics Certificate (12 credits) and Health Care Informatics – Project Management Certificate (16 credits).

The three online HCI courses offered for the spring semester are:

• HCI 200 - Introduction to Health Care InformaticsProvides the foundation by introducing basic concepts, historical development, current and future trends in the specialized discipline and the role of the informaticist in health care organizations. Clarifies the skills and knowledge required for successful integration of real-time documentation in health care informatics and management of that technology within the health care system

• HCI 210 - Management of Health Care Information and System Security Provides students with fundamental concepts in the discipline of health care informatics security systems that are required in the management of electronic data. Prepares the student to maintain data information system security within established standards of practice.

• HCI 220 - Database Systems In Health CareProvides students with the concepts that are fundamental to the field of health care informatics database principles. Includes the development of data set management, the importance of accurate data input and mapping information extracted from the health care documentation system